|
TOPEKA, KS (11 October 2007) Don Knowles made it two poles for iRacing.com in two years at the Sports Car Club of America National Championship Runoffs, this year setting the fast time in the T2 class at the wheel of a Phoenix Performance-prepared Pontiac Solstice GXP Z0K Club Sport. Knowles' iRacing.com teammate, Joe Aquilante, will line up fourth on the grid for Sunday's national championship event at Heartland Park Topeka.
Knowles, who won the SSB pole and race last year aboard an iRacing.com Solstice Z0K Club Sport, set his pole-winning T2 time in yesterday's qualifying session and then watched today as Ed Zabinski in a third Phoenix Performance Solstice came within a tenth of a second of matching Knowles' time. Phoenix Performance Solstices swept the first two rows of the grid, as Bill Ziegler qualified third.
"We were the first class on track yesterday, when it was quite cool," Knowles said. "The weather was perfect for our turbocharged engine and I really didn't expect to see people going faster today, when we ran in the middle of the afternoon and the hottest part of the day. But I was watching the other classes and their times were generally coming down today. I think the track was just getting faster."
"Don and Joe have done a terrific job so far this week, both behind the wheel as competitors and in the paddock as representatives of our company," said Scott McKee, vice president of marketing for iRacing.com. "SCCA drivers and their crew are one of the groups we had in mind when we designed our simulation software, and these guys are showcasing it very effectively. Of course the big prize is awarded on Sunday, and we know it will be a very competitive race."
Knowles, who will be going for his fourth career national title, expects the start of the race to be an edge-of-the-seat thriller. "The first turn is very fast and quite tricky and a long way from the watchful eye of the starter's stand. There are a number of cars behind us with a lot of power and torque, and drivers with a ton of desire. You know they're going to try to capitalize on that going into turn one. It will be quite interesting to see how it all works out."
With the Runoffs' format of four days of qualifying followed by three days of racing, the iRacing.com Solstices won't be back on track again until a 10-minute warm-up session Sunday morning, two hours before the T2-class race. In the meantime, the Phoenix Performance crew will be making sure the cars are race ready. "We'll be going through the data from the qualifying sessions, seeing what we can learn," Aquilante said. "And hoping that next year Heartland Park Topeka will be in the sim so we can spend the time after qualifying practicing for the race."
|
